‘Requiem for lives lost’: Making music from Mexico’s guns

That crazy-looking flute in the above picture? Chances are it was a weapon in Mexico’s drug war.

Or parts of it were, at least. Now those pieces make up one of 50 working musical instruments engineered from confiscated Mexican revolvers, shotguns, and machine guns that were once scheduled for public destruction.

Mexico City-based artist Pedro Reyes conceived of the project, titled “Imagine,” as a statement on widespread gun violence in the country.